Morphology

What is Morphology

• Morph = form or shape, ology = study of

• Morphology is the study of the basic building blocksof meaning in language. These building blocks,called morphemes, are the smallest units of formthat bear meaning or have a grammatical function.

What Are Morphemes?

• Words are not the most basic units of meaning.They are frequently composed of even more basicelements.

(1) a. obvious: homework, dinnertime, moonlight,classroom

b. medium: fearless, quickly, fishing,momentary

c. difficult: walks, tenth, dog’s, flipped

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• The most basic elements of meaning are calledmorphemes. Each of the preceding examplescontained at least 2 morphemes. We can take,for instance, ”th” from ”tenth” and say that ithas a meaning all to itself – namely, ”the ordinalnumeral corresponding to the cardinal numeral I’mattached to”.

Basic Concept Of Word Structure

• Morphemes do not combine in arbitrary ways.There are definite patterns to the distribution ofmorphemes in polymorphemic words. e.g. rewrite6= write-re, walks 6= s-walk. The number, order ofand type of morphemes used to make up a particularword is called its structure. Morphologists study notonly the meanings of the various morphemes, butalso their patterns of distribution – the structuresthey are capable of forming. This knowledge is partof linguistic competence.

• The structure of words can be represented by trees.

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Classification Of Morphemes

Free And Bound Morphemes

• A morpheme is free if it is able to appear as a wordby itself. It is bound if it can only appear as part ofa larger, multi-morphemic word. Every morphemeis either free or bound.

• Free morphemes are also referred as roots.

• Bound morphemes are also referred to as affixes,among which there are prefixes, infixes, andsuffixes.

(2) a. prefixes: un-happy, re-write, pre-view

b. suffixes: writ-ing, quick-ly, neighbor-hood

c. infixes: (very rare in English) speech-o-meter

• Bound morphemes may be derivational orinflectional

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• A stem can be defined as a root to which an affixcan be added. Thus, the root dog is also a stem,because, even though it contains no affix(es), anaffix could be added to it - to form, e.g., dog-s.This notion is necessary because not all roots aresuch that affixes can be added to them - e.g., of,or, I, etc.

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Derivational Morphemes

Derivational morphemes create new words. Theyderive new words from other words.

e.g., unhappy ← un + happy;happiness ← happy + ness; preview ← pre + view.

Further properties

• change part of speech or the meaning of a word

(3) a. part of speech: us-able (V → A), trouble-some (N → A), judg-ment (V → N)

b. meaning: dis-comfort, ex-boyfriendc. both: use-less (V → A)

• are not required by syntax

• are not very productive: dis-like, *dis-hate

• usually occur before inflectional suffixes: work-er-s

• can be either suffixes or prefixes (in english)

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Inflectional Morphemes

Inflectional morphemes, on the other hand, do notchange meanings or parts of speech, but insteadsimply make minor grammatical changes necessary foragreement with other words.

e.g., cats ← cat + s; cooler ← cool + er.

• There are only eight inflectional morphemes: -s,-ed, -ing, - en, -s, -’s, -er, -est

• They do not change meaning or part of speech:

cat - cats - cat’s → nouns

• They are required by the syntax

• They are very productive

• They occur after derivational morphemes, usually atthe very end of the word (in english)

• They can only be suffixes (in english)

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Cranberry Morphemes

In the word cranberry, is cran an affix?

No, it is a bound root, a so-called cranberrymorpheme.

Cranberry morphemes are morphemes that occur onlyas bound roots and that have no constant associatedmeaning.

• cranberry, boysenberry

• permit, commit, submit

• receive, perceive, conceive

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Content and Function Morphemes

Morphemes (bound or free) can be either content orfunction morphemes.

• Content morphemes carry some semantic contentas opposed to performing a grammatical function.For example car, -able, -un.

• Function morphemes act solely to providegrammatical information and syntactic agreement.and, plural -s

• Note that these are not simply different namesfor the derivational/inflectional distinction – D/Imorphemes are all bound, while content/functionmorphemes may be free as well (e.g, prepositionsare free function morphemes)

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Pitfalls Of Identifying Morphemes

• morphemes 6= syllables.

(4) a. monomorphemic: rigamarole, syllable,rutabaga

b. polymorphemic: cats, likes, its, cried

• The sounds associated with a morpheme are notunique – other morphemes may share them

(5) a. cats 6= cat’s, likes 6= likes (... and dislikes),

b. (care)-ful 6= full, (care)-less 6= less

• Don’t be fooled by spelling obscuring the phoneticrepresentations of morphemes

(6) a. writ-er, edit-or, li-ar

b. ed-ible, wash-able

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The Hierarchical Structure Of Words

• Words are formed in steps, with one affix attachingto a complete word, which can be a free word or amorphological complex word.

• Affixes in general can only combine with words ofa single part of speech. (e.g., ”-able” and “re-”only combine with verbs). Also, the words affixesform after combination are usually of a single part ofspeech as well, not necessarily the same as the wordswith which it combines. (”-able” forms adjectives,“re-” forms verbs).

• This fact implies that the order of combination formorphemes makes a difference, because otherwiseyou would end up with ”non-well-formed” words.

(7) a. unusable = un + (use + able),not *(un + use) + able.

b. reusable = (re + use) + able,not *re + (use +able).

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(8)

re- use

V -able

Adj

• Because trees have a particular order of morphemiccombination associated with them, we can say thattheir structure is hierarchical.

• There is a hierarchy among the various morphemesas to the order in which they were added to theword.

• Some words can have multiple structures associatedwith them because of various combinatorialpossibilities for the constituent morphemes. This isusually due to phonetically identical but otherwisediffering morphemes causing some sort of ambiguity,e.g., unlockable. These are ambiguous in their wordstructure.

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Morphemes and multiple parts of speech

There are (a very small number of) examples of affixeswhich combine with more than one part of speech(e.g., pre-).

(9) a. preexist, precede, predetermine (V → V)

b. preseason, prewar (N → A)

c. prefrontal, predental, prehistoric (A → A)

We want to say that all these ”pre-s” are the samemorpheme and not just different morphemes whichhappen to be phonetically identical, since the meaningof the prefix does not change, regardless of which partof speech it is combined with. The combinations arenevertheless rulegoverned.

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Word Formation Processes

• Affixation: process of forming words by addingaffixes to morphemes.

– V + -able → A: predict+ -able– V + -er → N: sing+er– un + A → A: un-productive– A + en → V: deep+ -en, thick+ -en

• Compounding: word formation process by whichnew words are formed by combining two or moreindependent words.

– A + A → A: bittersweet– N + N → N: rainbow– V + V → V: sleepwalk– P + P → P: without– V + N → N: pickpocket– N + V → V: spoonfeed– P + V → V: overdo

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Word Formation Processes (cont.)• Reduplication: process of forming new words either

by doubling an entire word (total reduplictation) orpart of a word (partial reduplication).

– English: humpty-dumpty, higgledy-piggeldy(partial reduplication)

– Creole: blak “black”, blakblak “very black” (totalreduplication)

• Morpheme-internal Changes: a type of wordformation process wherein a word changes internallyto indicate grammatical information.

– ablaut: sing, sang, sung; swim, swam, swum– other changes: man, men; mouse, mice, goose,

geese

• Suppletion: a relationship between forms of aword wherein on form cannot be phonologically ormorphologically derived from the other, this processis rare.

– am - was; go -went– good - better; bad - worse

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Minor Word Formation Processes

• Acronyms: Abbreviations formed by taking theinitial sounds (letters) of the words of a phrase anduniting them to form a pronouncable word.

– laser : light amplification by simulated emissionof radiation

– scuba: self-contained underwater breathingapparatus

– radar : radio detecting and ranging– AIDS : Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

• Blending: process of creating a new word bycombining the parts of two different words, usuallythe beginning of one word and the end of another.

– breakfast + lunch → brunch– smoke + fog → smog– motor + hotel → motel

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Minor Word Formation Processes (cont.)

• Back formation: word formation process in which anew base form is created from an apparently similarform by using proportional analogy.

– revise : revision; televise : television– actor : act; editor : edit– create : creation; donate : donation

• Clipping: process of creating new words byshortening parts of longer words.

– doctor, professional, veterinarian, laboratory,advertisement, dormitory, examination

– bicycle (bike)– refrigerator

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Morphological Types Of Languages

There are two basic morphological types of languagestructure: analytic vs synthetic.

• (purely) Analytic languages have only freemorphemes – sentences are sequences of single-morpheme words.

• Synthetic languages make use of both free andbound morphemes. In general, polymorphemicwords consist of a stem onto which various affixesare added.

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Subtypes of synthetic languages

There are 3 major subtypes of synthetic languages:agglutinating, fusional, polysynthetic.

• Agglutinating: morphemes are combined ”loosely”– morphemes are attached to each other ”cleanly”,so it is simple to pick out where one morpheme endsand the next one begins. (e.g., Hungarian, LF – p.130)

• Fusional: like agglutinating, but affixes tend to”fuse together”, making them difficult or impossibleto separate from each other (and the stem). (e.g.,Spanish – LF p. 131)

• Polysynthetic: extremely complex, multi-stemand multi-affix words can be constructed, frequentlycorresponding to entire complex sentences in other,less synthetic, languages. (e.g., Sora – LF, p. 132)

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